Confident ANP now wants CEC post

ISLAMABAD: The Awami National Party (ANP) after successfully sabotaging the dual nationality bill has now moved a step forward and asked the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to appoint the new chief election commissioner (CEC) from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“The present central offices have no one from our province and therefore the new CEC from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would be a step towards removing the sense of provincial imbalance,” the ANP senior vice president Haji Adeel told The News.

Most of the key central positions, he said, are held by those from Sindh and Punjab with Balochistan having the top judicial position, the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

He mentioned the president, speaker National Assembly, chairman Senate, the prime minister, army chief, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee chairman and governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) are among the key positions wherein the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is not represented.

“And if we are ignored for the CEC appointment, it would be a bad omen and a glaring example of provincial imbalance in the Centre,” Haji Adeel further said.

The ANP has proposed the names of Justice (retd) Mian Ajmal and Justice (retd) Raza Muhammad Raza for the CEC post but they are not formally part of the names, three each, forwarded to the parliamentary committee for appointments in the ECP by the government and opposition. The parliamentary committee, headed by Syed Khurshid Shah, is meeting here today (Monday) to take up the issue for the first time after Yusuf Raza Gilani was disqualified as prime minister in the contempt of court case.

Adeel made it clear that the ANP had formally informed President Zardari about its reservations on the dual nationality amendment. “But we have no objection on the contempt of court legislation, on which we would support the government,” he said, adding: “The Supreme Court should also ask the former CEC, secretary and other concerned authorities of the Election Commission why they allowed the MPs holding dual nationalities to contest the elections either in 2008 or in the by-polls.”